


niki finds out about ghostbur

by Anonymous



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Gen, Just a drabble, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:08:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29472210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: niki finds out about ghostbur!takes place after wilbur's death(not canon)
Relationships: Niki | Nihachu & Wilbur Soot
Kudos: 6
Collections: Anonymous





	niki finds out about ghostbur

you don’t know he’s passed. not for a while. you see the somber looks and the lowered heads, hear the grieving wails and the hushed sobs. no one talks to you, though. especially not about him. so you have to assume it’s because of the crater he left behind. a polite gesture, a silent agreement that _that was bad, let's just look away._ they do a good job at it too. the construction work starts and ends before you even get the chance to properly take in the catastrophe. everyone does a wonderful job settling in, moving on, forgetting. dark jokes get thrown around every now and again, about the tragic fate of your home and what it used to be, but they get brushed off, and the topic changes. and everyone moves on.

you feel stuck. there's a sick part of you that misses that steaming crater, the loose debris, the harsh scent of smoke, air stuffy. your eyes would hurt and you had to squint if you wanted to get a proper look at the damage. even then it would be too polluted to see properly. 

you were mad at him for it. this was your home once as well. little remains of it, now. even less remains of it when you see the spruce logs being stacked, the houses built, the lake under it. it's pretty. you don't seem to find a place to call your own here, though. that's alright. you just need time to settle in.  
you find yourself wondering if he would have liked this. to see the way tubbo leads, so differently and so similarly to him. to see how his country, his legacy, grows and evolves. he picked tubbo to lead for a reason, you conclude. 

you think he’s just left. that the consequences of his actions would have been far too much to bear, to see his nation truly destroyed, friends and faimly devastated. that to bail would have been a far simpler solution. run off without another word, create a new nation with some different kids and pretend this mess never happened as well. there’s nights where you think he’s a coward for it, you think of ways you'd insult him to his face, call him out on his negligence, the way you'd curse him out and tell him how he's a bad person.   
nights where you hate him for it, you imagine yourself not even talking to him if he were to show up, how you'd give him disgusted looks in the distance, and the way you would tell him off if he tried to reason with you.   
there's nights when his old, battered trench coat brings you more comfort than any person, any place, or any words ever could. it's dirty and it smells of ash, the bottom ever so slightly burnt, an unfixed hole on the left side. you leave it, though. unwashed and unsowed, because to change anything about it would change the last thing you have to remember him.

you start wearing it. just every now and again, at first. maybe when you want to go for a late night walk and the night air is just a little chillier than your sweater can help. or maybe when it rains and you find you wouldn’t like your clothing too drenched. you even make excuses for it for a while, because you see the way tommy grimaces when he sees it, or how tubbo has to take a second glance. you stop doing that after a bit, because you stop talking to them after a bit.

the coat stays though. it starts feeling weird not to wear it. you think it fits you, oversized and rough as it may be. you contemplate fixing it up. you don't.

you find out he’s passed far later than you’d like.

a peppy ghost who seems to enjoy your ragged sense of fashion. 

he greets you politely, with a cheerful hello. he talks cautiously, testing his boundaries and trying to stay respectful, a pattern of speech you remember from when you first met him and you didn't know each other yet.  
there’s recognition in there, in the way he talks and acts, movements lively and smooth, that oddly fitting contrast of graceful and carelessly clumsy. he gets more comfortable as you talk, not really of anything, yet he seems to gain a sense of confidence with every sentence you two shoot back and forth. you do not.  
there's an overwhelming amount of emotions you feel, and confidence is the furthest thing from all of them. it starts with nothing, because at first it doesn't quite register what's happening. shock is the first big one, and it hits the moment you give him a proper look, because his colorless skin, the smallest lack of opacity, the white eyes, tell a story all on their own.   
then it's all the subsections and synonyms of devastation and sadness, because it all clicks into place. every dot connects. wilbur is dead. wilbur has _been_ dead for the months or years he's been gone.   


you give him short answers, and he responds with long ones, and that gives you the time and energy and willpower you need to collect yourself, pick yourself up, compose yourself. if only for a little bit.

you don't want to yell at him. you don't want to curse him out. you don't want to apologize to him, to cry in his arms, to ask why he did what he did, to ask why he died. you want to say something, you want to ask something, anything. but your mouth feels dry, and your voice seems nonexistent. he doesn't seem to notice the way you're falling apart at the seams. if he does he's doing a great job at pretending he doesn't, though. you'll just listen to him, for now. chip in with tiny sounds or words, just to keep him in the conversation. because you still want to talk to him. you've missed him, and though he feels far from wilbur, you still see bits of pieces of him there, evidence of the person you once knew.   
but there's hurt he's caused, too. from the nights you've spent curled up next to the camarvan, or when you would see the kids he left behind, aimlessly walking around, tripping on rocks or debris that wasn't there back in the day. people cleaning up and hiding any bit of the mess he made, insistent of covering the horrid tracks. the cries and sobs you could hear when you stayed out past bedtime. you lose yourself in your thoughts and the aftermath of his death. you almost entirely miss what he's saying.  
he mentions something about his bad memory, and you, before you realize it, in your weird zoned out state, ask him if he remembers you. because from how he's been talking to you, you worry that the answer may not be affirmative.

and it feels like that for a little bit, because he has to think about it. there's thoughts that run through your mind, and in one of them you think it's better if he doesn't know you now. it'll be easier for you. you wish he did, though, because there's stories you want to remind him of and inside jokes that you haven't been able to make.

his pondering ends, and his face lights up when he gets to say "of course! niki!" and suddenly it all comes back to him. he starts mentioning stories, like the time they were at the beach and built seven different sand castles, and places you've been, like the weird little abandoned house they found in their teens, and the sights you've seen, like the pretty little valley that you took him to after you found it. he laughs at something that happened in a distant memory, something about you forgetting to bring your shoes, and you feel every piece you've picked up and carefully put back into place, every critical thought you've had of him or his actions, crumble all over again. with every word he seems to recognize you better, and the feeling is mutual.   
you suck in the tears that threaten to burst any minute, you breathe in, and you smile. you chip in with details that seem foggy to him, because you know every story he has of you two. you’ve been running them through your head for a while now, going over them twice and thrice, wondering if he left because of something you did. obviously not.

he doesn’t remember a lot of things, you notice. he doesn’t remember the time he bumped into you and you fell and scraped your knee. he doesn’t remember the time he found you crying after your cat had passed away. he doesn’t remember the time you hit him a little too hard. doesn’t remember that one argument you had. 

he doesn’t remember what he did. 

you won’t be the one to remind him, either. for now you’ll just enjoy his company, pretending nothing bad had ever happened to you two or what was once your home. 

**Author's Note:**

> hi! thank you sm for reading! if you enjoyed, let me know with a comment! they're lovely to read. i mostly wanted to explore how niki would feel about wilbur after l'manberg gets blown up, because they were definitely close friends in canon. something something the way you feel about bad people when you're friends with them will be inherently complicated something something. i can only hope i did that topic even a little bit of justice haha  
> ALSO THIS is entirely platnoic!!! they're friends! :)


End file.
